The Playbook Podcast

A bipartisan group of six senators today will introduce the Railway Safety Act of 2023, legislation aimed at preventing a repeat of the toxic firestorm in East Palestine, Ohio, that followed the Feb. 4 derailment of a chemical train. According to a summary we saw last night, the legislation would: 1) require rail carriers to give advance notice to state emergency response officials before running...

Polls open in less than an hour in Chicago, where Mayor Lori Lightfoot faces eight rivals — and a very real chance of being shut out of the likely April 4 runoff election. A new poll from Victory Research finds the incumbent trailing both former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas and Cook County commissioner Brandon Johnson. Plus in just a few hours, President Joe Biden's student debt relief p...

Ron DeSantis's “The Courage to Be Free” will be released tomorrow, kicking off a media tour that is widely assumed to be the prelude to a formal announcement this spring that he’s running for president.  The book rollout is taking full advantage of DeSantis’s relationship with the Rupert Murdoch media empire. The book is published by HarperCollins, which is owned by Murdoch’s News Corp. The first...

One year ago today, Russian President Vladimir Putin launched an invasion of Ukraine that he thought would quickly topple the government in Kyiv, expose Western powers as feckless and hopelessly divided, and usher in a new, muscular era of Russian world power.  He was wrong on all counts. But the toll of that decision has been immense. A year of unspeakable tragedy has left enormous questions abou...

Did Emily Kohrs just save Donald Trump from prosecution in Georgia? Kohrs is the 30-year-old woman from the Atlanta area who was between retail jobs last year when she was suddenly tasked with one of the most sensitive jobs in America: forewoman of the special grand jury investigating whether Trump and his allies committed any crimes in trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgi...

With Congress out on recess and President Joe Biden still abroad, most of today’s marquee political events are happening outside of the beltway … — IN Iowa, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) begins his “Faith In America” listening tour, dipping his toe in the proverbial water ahead of a possible 2024 campaign. And this morning, Playbook has exclusive excerpts from Scott’s speech.  “Conservatism is my person...

President Joe Biden is in Europe, reminding everyone that he’s commander in chief — even as Republicans back home are angling to try to take his job. Today, he’ll huddle with Polish President Andrzej Duda and give a speech at Warsaw Castle ahead of the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine later this week. The meeting comes as the media is still buzzing about his surprise visit to K...

Don Lemon may just be the luckiest man in cable TV.  The “CNN This Morning” co-anchor set the media and political worlds ablaze yesterday morning with his on-air suggestion that GOP presidential contender Nikki Haley wasn’t “in her prime” at age 51. “A woman is considered to be in their prime in [their] 20s and 30s and maybe 40s,” he said. Yet by day’s end, the vicious backlash to Lemon’s remarks...

Comets have staying power because they orbit the sun, while shooting stars burn up as they crash through the Earth’s atmosphere. The early take on Nikki Haley, who made her GOP presidential primary debut yesterday with a speech in Charleston, S.C., is that she’s more likely to shine brightly for a moment and then fall to Earth. “[H]ers will be a highly conventional campaign,” wrote Rich Lowry afte...

Happening today (offically offically) — “Haley enters the fray, a female candidate against a man known for mocking them,” by Natalie Allison in Charleston, S.C.: “Stepping out ahead of a field of men who spent the better part of two years mulling and flirting with a 2024 run, Nikki Haley marked her entrance into the Republican presidential primary with an announcement video and a formal event on W...

“Pence to fight special counsel subpoena on Trump's 2020 election denial,” by Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein: Former VP Mike Pence “is set to argue that his former role as president of the Senate — therefore a member of the legislative branch — shields him from certain Justice Department demands. And the biggest subplot of the slowest-moving story In Washington — the partisan standoff over the fede...

For the fourth time in eight days, the U.S. shot down a flying object yesterday. The latest kill came above Lake Huron, near the border with Canada, after it had flown over part of Michigan, The Detroit News’ Melissa Nann Burke and Kim Kozlowski report. The Pentagon said an F-16 fighter jet took the object down with a Sidewinder missile at around 20,000 feet after determining that it posed no “kin...

Since 2009, the president has almost always sat down for an interview with the network broadcasting the Super Bowl. But ahead of Sunday’s big game, Fox News is worried Biden is freezing them out, Variety’s Brian Steinberg scooped. Though Fox didn’t demand any conditions for the interview, the White House hasn’t committed, and “executives at Fox News are proceeding as if it will not” happen. And Se...

After feeling lightheaded, Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) was admitted to GWU Hospital yesterday and stayed overnight for observation. “Initial tests did not show evidence of a new stroke, but doctors are running more tests,” his office announced in a statement. And as President Joe Biden visits Florida today, “he’s bringing more than just talking points,” writes Gary Fineout. “Biden will be giving b...

President Joe Biden had a few goals last night: 1. Remind his audience of his accomplishments over the last two years; 2. Reiterate his positions in the spending debate (no negotiations over the debt ceiling and no touching Social Security and Medicare); 3. Detail the most popular highlights of his 2023 agenda; and 4. Expose his congressional GOP opposition as unreasonable and chaotic. The speech...

In his prior trips to the House rostrum, President Joe Biden was flanked by symbols of unified Democratic power in Washington: VP Kamala Harris over his right shoulder and then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi over his left.  When Biden arrives tonight for his State of the Union address, things will look different. A newly minted Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy, will look down on Biden in a visual reminder...

When President Joe Biden ascends the House rostrum tomorrow to deliver his State of the Union address, the buzz will hover tens of thousands of feet higher, where a Chinese surveillance balloon floated until it was shot down Saturday off the South Carolina coast. It’s a distraction Democrats aren’t exactly thrilled about. They’ve been hoping Biden could use the biggest bully pulpit of them all to...

We have our first taste of how different conducting foreign policy will be for President Joe Biden now that Republicans control the House.  The Pentagon revealed Thursday afternoon that it has detected and is tracking a large Chinese spy balloon floating in the stratosphere above Montana, where it was surveilling a nuclear missile base. The balloon, which entered U.S. airspace on Tuesday, is well...

“The Cold Calculus Behind the Shrinking GOP Presidential Field.” Would-be Republican White House aspirants face a harsh reality: It’s not just Donald Trump who’s freezing the 2024 field, reports Jonathan Martin. As GOP strategist Scott Jennings puts it: “They don’t have a Trump problem, they have a [Ron] DeSantis problem.” But consider this: “[T]he history most on the minds of the Republicans cons...

President Joe Biden and Rep. Kevin McCarthy are scheduled to meet today in the Oval Office at 3:15 p.m. Keep your expectations in check.  “Boring,” a top White House official said, when we asked about the first one-on-one session between the president and new House speaker. “First meeting of a hundred to follow.” McCarthy has set a similarly low bar. “I think the first thing he should do,” McCarth...

One month into the House Republican majority, a clear picture is emerging of the problems Speaker Kevin McCarthy will face managing his slim, five-seat majority. (That is, if the chaotic speaker election didn’t make things clear enough.) Already, Republicans are scrambling to salvage red-meat proposals they’ve been talking about for months, whether it’s cracking down on the southwest border or tar...

The brutal and shocking video showing Tyre Nichols being beaten to death by Memphis police officers earlier this month prompted condemnation from all corners of Washington after it was released Friday. Whether it will prompt action is another matter. It has, for now, renewed behind-the-scenes conversations on Capitol Hill about the possibility of bipartisan policing legislation. Aides for key lawm...

Later this morning, RNC members here at a five-star resort on the Pacific Ocean will pile into a private conference room and elect the organization’s next chair after a weekslong, bitter campaign pitting incumbent Ronna McDaniel against top challenger Harmeet Dhillon. While McDaniel remains the favorite, Dhillon’s team has been working overtime since they arrived, and there are unmistakable signs...

With a catastrophic federal default potentially months away, Wall Street and the rest of America is reacting with a big yawn — and, honestly, can you blame them? The high-stakes debt standoffs of Barack Obama's presidency each ended with last-second deals that avoided economic calamity and saved face for all the principals involved. Washington went on to lift the debt limit four more times with mi...

On Tuesday, Kevin McCarthy officially booted Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell from the House Intelligence Committee. In a letter that was short on details about the two California Democrats’  sins, the new House speaker referred to “integrity,” “honesty” and “credibility” as driving his decision. It is no surprise that reporters immediately asked McCarthy how his expulsion of the two Democrats...